


With a Feeling Rare

by amituvia



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coming Out, Non-binary character, Other, being not-cis while looking v masc/fem is hard yo, but surprise! it's francis! :D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25151068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amituvia/pseuds/amituvia
Summary: Since they met, Francis banged on James’ every door, and busted through every wall, every secret room, until all he had inside him was a single open plain. James would be damned twice over should he let that very man hoard any shame.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 21
Kudos: 42





	With a Feeling Rare

**Author's Note:**

> so while i'm in-fucking-love with the amount of nb content in this fandom, i felt like the focus on james, while understandable, leaves something to be desired. i think exploring such a narrative with francis, who is already often depicted as someone with body issues in fannon, could be a nice change of pace. that being said, i'm agender, not nb, so if i'm off here i'm sorry and please let me know.

It’s two pm when James steps out the lift of his and Francis’ building and walks down the hall to their apartment. His last meeting for the day had been canceled, so he had enough time to go to the Indian place near his work and get some curry to go. Francis, who is currently drowning in papers he needs to grade, likely skipped lunch again, and coming home now means he will get to surprise him with a nice meal.

Later this evening, they will go to Will’s birthday party, for which he already picked up a dress and make up from his wife. He’s going as the queen of night - a joke reference to the summer he and Will saw the magic flute four times. He smiles to himself while fishing for his keys. Isn’t that a nice thought: A quite afternoon followed by a loud night.

He opens the door carefully, not wanting to risk spilling the liquids of the curry onto the paper bag, places the food on the counter, takes off his shoes and jacket, and heads towards the study to call Francis over.

“Francis I’m—” He stops mid-word, catching Francis’ eye in the mirror through their opened bedroom door.

The man freezes completely, with one hand holding a thin brush and the other on the black round case of blue eyeshadow. James blinks at him several times as he puts them down on the nearby nightstand, slowly and deliberately, turning beat-red. “James,” He says, strangled, closing his eyes as he swallows. “Close the door, please.”

Despite the nearly calm tone of his words, every muscle in Francis body had gone completely stiff. Did he really expected to be ridiculed for this? But no - the look on his face appeared to be not one of embarrassment but trepidation. Of someone caught committing a most heinous sin – his jaw clenched tight and hands balled into fists on both sides of his body. 

Since they met, Francis banged on James’ every door, and busted through every wall, every secret room, until all he had inside him was a single open plain. James would be damned twice over should he let that very man hoard any shame.

He opens the door wider.

“Francis…” He starts, walking into the room with cautious steps. “Do you-“

“No,” Francis is shaking his head nearly angrily now, screwing his eyes tightly shut. “I don’t want to say anything!”

James places a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I think, that if it provoked such a reaction out of you, that it terrified you, to be seen with a bit of eyeshadow I was going to put on myself later this evening, we should probably talk about this.” He rubs his back in a slight up and down motion, standing beside him as Francis collects himself, shaking his head a few more times as he re-opens his eyes and unclenches his shaking fists.

“Please,” He continues, hoping he could at least get him to sit on the bed rather than keep on standing in front of the mirror. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“I - don’t have the words – what they say now - I Knew. But.” He pauses his stammering, turning his body further from the offending mirror. “There are words for it, but,” Then locks his jaw again, and says nothing more.

James pushes him down on the edge of the bed, Francis’ breath shuddering as they sit down as if he is trying not to sob. “It is not just about some makeup, is it?”

That gets him a bitter breath of laughter. “As if that is not bad enough,” at James’ raised eyebrow he adds “It’s not the same for you and me. You put on a dress and pearls in your hair and it’s just some good fun and a show but not…” He turns to look at him, eyes red but piercing as always. “I have a bad relationship with pretty things.”

Francis always had, for better or for worse, the ability to say the most devastating things as if they were simple truths.

“Well, you’ve been in a relationship with me for more than three years, and _I’m_ a pretty thing, so whatever bad luck you had in the past has surely lifted.” Francis scoffs at him, but his mouth twitches upwards all the same. James takes it as a good sign leans in for a kiss on the cheek. “Please, tell me what’s the matter.”

Staring ahead with his hand cupping his mouth and cheeks, he says “When I was a child, I think it was fair to say I was a favorite brother to my sisters, because I always let them dress me up, and call me a lady.” He casts a fragile smirk at James at that, who carefully smiles back. “They were usually rather chivalrous about the whole thing, asking for the opinion of ‘the lady of the house’, laughing with me at my brothers who didn’t understand ‘girl stuff’, it was… very nice. And a very long time ago.”

“And after?” James asked.

Francis rubs his hand over his face and through his hair. “I got older. I didn’t have the excuse of young age or desire to be found out – I already suspected I’m looking at boys the wrong way. I also didn’t have… The body for it.”

“Francis…“

“ _James._ ” He says forcefully, cutting him short. “Don’t. I _know_ what I look like. The navy, it made me a man and took out whatever woman I had. Look at my arms! Look at my face! I put on makeup - I look like a clown!” Once, when he and JC got shitfaced on shore leave, he accidently slipped a bit, said something like how every now and then he wished he could wear a skirt, and JC looked at him in shock for a second, and then laughed, and laughed and laughed.

James has a rather sad look on his face right now. “Are you a woman, Francis?”

His heart is hammering in his chest, the pulse in his temple deafening him. He came out as bisexual less than a decade ago, and thought that at this rate he will be keeping this to himself until he is dead and buried. He cannot do this. He cannot. “I – am not,” He wheezes.

“Because even if you are, I don’t care - you can be a woman with me Francis, you can be whatever you want.” He says that with great conviction, placing both hands on his shoulders and even giving him a slight shake – a leaf from Francis’ own book. He feels the words at the back of his throat, coming up from his belly, to the tip of his tongue.

“I’m both.”

There. There it is. Over fifty years it took, but here is that frightening truth. Here is the mirror. He must be a sight right now. If he looks half as frighten as he feels, there’s very little wander as to why James is taking such pity on him – his brow and mouth relax, his face morphing into something fond - a last soft look before Francis comes undone.

God, he still has an eyelid half-covered in blue eyeshadow.

James slides his hands up from Francis’ shoulders to caress his face on both sides, and kisses him chestly on the mouth. “Francis,” Another kiss is placed on his brow. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. This is your first time, saying it?”

“I never said it out loud, before now.”

“Goddamn.” He says simply, his sympathy obvious non-the-less.

Francis chuckles somewhat hysterically. “Took my time with it, didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry you had to.”

He remembered being fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seeing his body change, and hating the finality of its form. He remembered days of working, nights of drinking, times of great focus or haze when his body was merely a vessel – and then snapping out of that, looking at his large, rough hands, the hair on their back. The disappointment of that, the displeasure, _knowing_ that much like most of his nature, this is another part to keep hidden from family and peers.

He leans his head on James’ chest. “Me too,” A hand comes up to his hair, carding through it, calming and grounding him. He feels dizzy. He feels like crying, not entirely sure why. He suspected James wouldn’t care but after losing touch with most of his family since coming out, He felt this is almost anticlimactic.

James just says something that he misses completely.

“Hm?”

“You said before, that you knew. I was wandering, you know JC and Thomas for years, you’ve lived with Sophia – I mean, I haven’t really thought about it myself until just now, but none of them ever…?”

After what happened on that shore leave not once did he think to breach the subject with Ross, or Thomas, who was also a navy man then.

With Sophia... Sometimes, when they kissed, her lipstick smeared on him a bit, leaving a red print on his mouth. She never whipped it off, just smirked in that way of hers, all knowing and teasing. If they were indoors, he usually didn’t clean himself either, feeling almost as if it was a game between them. Though he never said anything, but with that, and with how she seemed to understand that sometimes he didn’t like being touched - he thought it meant she knew.

She asked him once “ _Do you want me to get you a tube of your own?_ ” But he was so shocked he refused immediately, and they never spoke of it again. And then they broke up, and she moved to Australia, so who’s to say what she made of this?

He shakes his head. “I didn’t have the words, for most of my life. Most days I am perfectly content with trousers, with my short hair, and yet even on days like that I often feel I’m both. Rarely all man. Sometimes it even changes throughout the day - I didn’t understand, and that always scared me. I mean, what makes you inherently a man? What makes you a woman? Makes you enough of either, so there isn’t any doubt? I never much liked my body. I didn’t know how to explain that to myself, especially when I was younger, when a woman was one thing and a man very much another. I still don’t sometimes.”

James nods at him seriously as he talks, taking it all in, stroking Francis with thumb. “Would you like me to call you… something else? Should I use different pronounce when we’re alone? Should I call you a woman sometimes? Anything you need.”

 _Anything you need._ Francis is a rough and blunt person, and suffered very little foolishness. Affection and romance mainly served to discomfort him. Some of it, admittedly, was because most forms of kindness and fun appeared suspicious to him after a certain age, particularly after his depression really set in: An ill-fitting suit that he could only taint with his misery.

But then an image comes to mind, of James raising his hand for a kiss like his sisters used to, as if he were a young lady in an Austen novel. Clever and desirable, righteous but elegant. He always deeply identified with the shyness of it all, the awkwardness of social interaction, the hope that a small smile or the right tone of voice will allow his true intentions to shine through.

James loves theater, and is an avid Austen fan. If he wants to, he knows he need only ask, and James will put on a top hat and ask if he would like to travel to Bath. Francis could put on the delicate necklace like his mother used to wear, the one with a sapphire medallion that went so well with her eyes.

“Would you help me with my eyes?” He answers instead, needing to let all of these sink in before additional excitement.

“Of course!” James re-takes the brush and eyeshadow into his hands with enthusiasm that Francis believes is not just for his sake. “Lucky for us it’s just your colour.” He winks. “Close your eyes for me.”

He closes them, and soon after feels the brush on his lid, the pressure of it rather unusual. “You know,” James starts, “It would be awfully nice of you to indulge your boyfriend and come with him to the party with matching makeup,”

Francis remains silent as James finishes with the eyelid he started, and throughout most of the second one as well before replying “I should think so, and with your notable powers of persuasion it wouldn’t be hard to believe.”

“Open up.” He blinks slowly, vision blurry for a moment. James is smiling warmly at him, his face open, his mouth a bit a-gap. “Perfect.”

Francis feels his face warm up slightly. Trust James, the man who always goes big, to the point that he used to infuriate him, to be so calm, to talk so low, to do the heavy lifting without complaints. God, he loves him. “You - have a pencil too?”

“I do, actually. Black. Remember Halloween two years ago?”

Francis nods, a bit eager, a bit wishful, a bit high on the easiness of all of this. “Can we do that too?”

**Author's Note:**

> elements are borrowed from the fic "The Turn Up" @what_alchemy, which i strongly recommend if you want something very smutty to read.


End file.
